The Ballad of the Democracy Destroyer, or, Let It Slide

There came a man, wealth was his god;

And vain and boastful was his play,

But still the people did applaud

And send him on his merry way

To fame and fortune, wrongly earned.

But he the power of fame had learned.

But when his star began to fade,

Ill fortune raised him up anew.

So to TV he turned, and played

A corporate mogul, strong and true.

But when off-camera, lust ran wild - 

It mattered not woman or child.

But those who fawned him let it slide

And helped his heinous deeds to hide.

Though fame was fun, he wanted more,

So power he ventured next to seek.

He sought it as he had before:

Suck up to strong and crush the weak.

The simpering haters joined his cause,

Ignoring all the rules and laws. 

Though all the girls he'd groped before 

Bore witness and called out his ways,

And others named the Russian shore

As stoking his demented haze,

Still half a nation followed him;

Liberty's light grew faint and dim.

Somehow this nation let it slide; 

Democracy just up and died.

Four years his ego rampant ran

Before the voters turned him out.

But four years on it was his plan

That put plain decency to rout.

Now regained his tainted height,

He turned to put his foes to flight.

A goon squad serving him alone

And minions spouting garbled lies?

Ere long, pretense was up and gone.

See, this is how a nation dies.

But still the ones with legal power

Failed oh, so badly in that hour.

Again the cowardly let it slide

And left him on his throne of pride.

He waged his war yet undeclared

On all who dared to disagree,

And rained foul hate throughout the land

From sea to no-more-shining sea.

E'en as his mind grew weak and pained, 

His minions siezed his power and reigned.

And so we stand at Hell's own gate - 

Or is it Heaven's? But who can tell?

Are we defunct? Is it too late?

Or can this story yet end well?

Will evil be cast out for good,

This nation yet be what it should?

Or, since vain Congress let it slide,

Has this country, at long last, died?

(January 2026)

Sermon: The Inevitable, Necessary Stewardship Sermon

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

October 19, 2025; Ordinary 

2 Corinthians 9:6-15; Mark 12:38-44

 

The Inevitable, Necessary Stewardship Sermon

 

It is one of those things for a new pastor. You know it’s coming. It’s inevitable. It doesn’t quite fall into the category of “things they didn’t teach you in seminary,” but it’s close. 

It’s stewardship time! Woohoo!

In all seriousness, this is nobody’s idea of fun. Nobody, except possibly certain folks who gravitate to public radio or television, likes to ask for money. I certainly don’t. I’m quite sure the Finance Commission folks would rather not have to go through this. We’d really rather be able to go on about things and not have to go through the whole business of pledge cards and all that. 

I’d certainly rather not have to conjure up a “stewardship sermon” out of scripture that really doesn’t want to be used that way. While in the Old Testament, or at least much of it, the people of Israel did have an established Temple that certainly required financial maintenance, in the New Testament there wasn’t really a “church” out there that needed a financial plan. By the time Paul and his contemporaries are helping the body of Christ spread across Asia Minor and into southeastern Europe, there are handfuls of “house churches,” meeting primarily in the homes of some of its members, without the overhead of a modern church building. When money was required, for care for the poor or sometimes for taking care of a visiting teacher like Paul or others, it was collected, essentially by passing the hat. 

That’s the kind of collection going on as Paul writes to the Christ-following community in Corinth in today’s epistle reading. Paul is trying to gather up funds for the believers at Jerusalem (who had fallen on hard times), and he begins the chapter by telling the Corinthians about the generosity of the Christians in Macedonia, who despite their own hardships had given with great generosity towards this collection. We do that kind of special collection on occasion.

But as far as regular budgets go, that’s obviously not how this church, and most modern churches in the US, work. We have a building. It’s a good building, even if all these stairs challenge me on some days. There are some repairs needed. There are regular expenses for things like electricity and water, keeping the grass from getting too long, having materials for study, and so forth. The choir needs music. Commissions need funds to varying degrees to carry out their work. Staff people need to be paid, even me, not to mention that manse next door being ready to receive your next pastor. And to be certain that we can meet those obligations, we ask that our members commit to giving as we are able to do.

Paul’s verses sound quite uplifiting; “God loves a cheerful giver” … “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance” …  “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity” … really, some great stuff there. And Jesus’s comments about the widow also are pretty effective at encouraging us, those of us who are not blessed with great material wealth, that our generosity matters, and that our generosity will be rewarded.

It all sounds so good, doesn’t it?

But there’s also a very disturbing and dismaying aspect to verses and stories like these, of which we are reminded in the verses before Jesus points out the widow to us. Teaching in the Temple, during the last week of his life, Jesus calls his disciples’ attentions to the scribes. It’s pretty unlikely that Jesus means to sweep every single scribe into this condemnation, as only a few verses before he has had a much more encouraging encounter with one of their number, but he’s had enough bad experiences with the scribes that he’s drawn some sharp and critical observations about them. 

One of the behaviors Jesus calls out involves the very kind of people he observes in the later verses of our reading today. First of all, Jesus disdains their propensity for seeking attention and flattery, for claiming the best seats at the table and generally being quite impressed with their own authority and power. But amidst this is an accusation that might catch us off guard: “They devour widows’ houses…”.  We don’t have an absolute fix on just what kind of action Jesus is condemning here; it might be the practice of “Corban” that was mentioned earlier in this gospel (declaring resources that might support such a person as “dedicated to God”), or it might be the exploitation of widows by traveling teachers who make themselves guests in those widows’ homes and consume their limited resources. Whatever it is, Jesus calls it out and puts forward the declaration that for their excesses “They will receive the greater condemnation.”

It’s not hard to find modern descendents of those scribes – in fact, if you’re of my generation it’s hard not to. It’s pretty easy to draw a line between these scribes and their modern descendents, if you’ve grown up in and lived in the age of the televangelist. I know some of you, maybe a lot of you, remember the likes of the Bakkers, the Swaggarts, and so many more who became infamous for extracting sums of money from the widows of our own day, persons on fixed incomes giving large chunks of those fixed incomes to those televised preachers. Frankly, any preacher of my generation trembles at preaching from these verses just because of that ugly abuse for which they’ve been used before.

So to some degree a stewardship drive, in which we ask you at least in part for your money, needs to be accompanied by a pledge by those charged to lead the church – from me and other staff members through the session and commission moderators – that we will not be exploiters of what you pledge and give. We must commit to you that what you give will be used wisely, prayerfully, and with no other goal than the support of this church in its ongoing call to do Christ’s work in God’s world. 

Still, even with this past hanging over today’s scripture, we can’t just dismiss the widow in the Temple as some kind of dupe. We don’t know her individual story; were it not for Jesus’s description we wouldn’t necessarily even know that she was giving everything she had. We’ve never heard of her before, and we never hear of her again.

But for all of the mystery about this woman, one thing we can know is that she is the opposite of the protagonist of an earlier story, the so-called “rich young ruler,” who came asking Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life only to go away sorrowing because Jesus told him to sell it all and follow? He was too attached to his possessions to follow. He was plenty willing to give his actions – remember how he declared he had kept the law since his youth? His wealth, though…another matter entirely. He had to hold on, to keep control of his stuff. And yes, this does sound a lot like those possessed by the greed that came up in a sermon a few weeks ago.

Our widow, though? No such fear. To borrow a slang term from poker, the widow has chosen to go “all in.” A player whose chips are limited might choose to push them “all in” when a hand demands it. The widow has little else to fall back on; she chooses to commit it all in the Temple.

We do not ask for all your money. We do, however, ask for all of you. We need not just your money – though we do need that – but we do need your time. We need your gifts of talent, your ability to teach or sing or give or lead or anything you can do. We need you, and we need all that you have to offer. There are lists in the fellowship room across the hall that give you some examples of that need.

Yes, fill out those pledge cards and turn them in next Sunday. But that’s only a start.

For commitments large and small, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #714 God of the Fertile Fields #716, God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending; #708, We Give Thee But Thine Own

Sermon: A Root of All Kinds of Evil

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

September 28, 2025, Pentecost 16C

1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

 

 

A Root of All Kinds of Evil

 

 

The opening of Douglas Adams's science-fiction satire The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an introductory look at a small, sad planet (which is of course Earth) as viewed from the outside. One of the observations from this outside perspective is pretty stinging:

This planet has ... a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

 

Indeed, if we look around it does seem as if most everyone associates happiness or contentment or pleasure or power or all manner of presumed good things with the movement of those small green pieces of paper or with the things acquired by doing so. And historically, even if those small green pieces of paper were actually gold or silver or copper coins or some other form of currency, the same holds true. The concept of "enough" seems to be widely lacking.

Both of today's main scripture readings hit on this subject, albeit from slightly different directions. The parable read from Luke 16 is probably at least familiar sounding to most of us; the rich man indulging in what his wealth gains him, while the poor man Lazarus is at the gate longing for anything he can eat at all. Both men die, and let's just say they go opposite directions. 

The striking thing about that ending is just how un-self-aware the rich man seems to be, even after he ends up in The Bad Place. He seems to think that Lazarus is somehow at his beck and call, first calling out for him to come dip his finger in water and cool the rich man's tongue - which, ewwwww - and then thinking that Lazarus could still be used as some kind of supernatural apparition to scare his brothers into getting right with God. Even in his Hadean state, the rich man of the parable somehow seems to think of himself from that point of view of wealth and the power that comes with it; I tell others what to do and they do it. Clearly the man had no concept of "enough" and no contentment at all.

At this point it's useful to jump over to the epistle reading and the oft-misquoted verse 10. How often have you heard it simply as "money is the root of all evil"? It's well-known enough that some users of the saying might have no idea that it has its roots in this scripture reading. And to be honest, the short form just quoted is such a deformation of the verse that it really shouldn’t be associated with the scripture reading. 

First of all, it isn't money that is the root of anything. To recall the Hitchhiker's Guide quote from the beginning of this sermon, it isn't the small green pieces of paper that are unhappy. No, it's not about the money, it's about our attitude towards it. It's about the desire for it, or the desire for the things it can bring us in large quantities. Or, to put it bluntly, it's about greed. Being unable to know what "enough" is, not being able to be content, is always on the bad side of scripture; the Bible never has anything good to say about greed. It is a corrosive thing; no wonder it ends up as one of the so-called Seven Deadly Sins. 

Note also what follows: "the love of money is a root...". Not "the" root. Love of wealth, or greed, isn't the only way for the soul to be corrupted. It's a big one, yes, but not the only one. 

Finally, note how this saying ends; this love of money of which we are being warned is a root "of all kinds of evil." There is more than one way to do bad or to go bad or to be bad in this world; the unpleasant truth is that greed ties into many of them. 

But there are other kinds of evil that the love of money gets tied up in. We live in a state where perhaps the truest pandemic is of wealthy business interests using the clout their wealth brings to get laws written to benefit them - shady development deals in places that should not be developed, or, to be blunt, just flat-out buying and owning politicians to do their bidding. Lots of people for whom enough is never enough, just loving that wealth and making absolutely sure it never gets to those who don't have it. Those people are just tools, like Lazarus was to the rich man in the parable.

Maybe one of the more subtle signs of this excess loving of wealth can be found in a bumper sticker that shows up in a few places now and then. It's one that seems harmless or even humorous on first sight but betrays perhaps one of the most insidious "kinds of evil" of which the love of money can be a root. I don't know if it ever made it up here, but mabye? It says, "If 10% is good enough for God, it's good enough for the IRS."

I have no interest in addressing the IRS at all here, but the first half of that sentence has got to be beaten down for the horrible theology it foists upon the world. What distorted scripture are you reading if you think that 10% of anything about your life is "good enough for God"? 

No. One might even have to be brash enough to say "Hell, no" in recognition of the fact that Hell would be exactly where such an idea would come from.

If you are going to be calling yourself a follower of Christ in any way at all, the only percentage of anything of yours that can even remotely be called "enough" is 100%. No less. 

The beginning of the reading from 1 Timothy reminds us that "we brought nothing into this world, so that we can take nothing out of it." The later portion of the reading puts it plainly that it is God "who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment," and that our business with whatever wealth we have is "to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future [that is, eternity], so that they may take hold of the life that really is life." It all comes from God and all goes to God for the doing of God's work here on this earth.

Since we are approaching that time when we are called upon to reckon with the finances of the church and how we will support the work of the church, we should go ahead and say that giving to the church certainly should be a part of that all belonging to God - not merely for the sake of propping up the church itself or making sure we have big shiny things to show off, but to keep the work of the church going. It may even be that there are more ways this church can bear witness in this place, and it may even be that our "wealth" - in the form of this building - can be part of that.

What wealth we have, great or small, is God's, if we claim to be God's. The rich man of the parable clearly didn't get it, and others too if the epistle reading is any indication. The world around us seems to need reminding as well. 

For the call to be rich towards God and others, and to be content with what God gives, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated):#41, O Worship the King, All Glorious Above;  #804, Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart!; #846, Fight the Good Fight

Well, they used to be green, anyway...